Credit: Photo by Rebecca Daly, courtesy of The Ohio State University.
Ohio State University researchers and their colleagues have identified a new genus of bacteria living inside hydraulic fracturing wells. Here, "produced water fluid"—the fluid that is collected at the surface of a hydraulic fracturing well after fracturing—is being filtered. The fluid is orange because it contains large amounts of iron that oxidizes when the fluids are brought to the surface. By analyzing the genomes of microbes in the filtered water, the researchers are piecing together the existence of microbial communities inside the wells.